KITTIES!!!!!

My driver's license expires soon so I headed to the DMV this morning to renew. As I walked in, there was an extremely friendly calico outside the glass door. She meowed and purred and rubbed against anyone's legs she could as they walked in. I bent over and gave her a thorough head scratch before heading in.

Once inside, I watched as the cat stood up against the glass door, pawing at the glass and meowing to get our attention.

"Poor kitty, she's hungry," said one woman.

"And pregnant," said another.

"Pregnant?" I asked.

Everyone in the room nodded and pointed out her belly to me which, I now noticed, was quite distended.

"Is she a stray?" I asked. People shrugged. She wasn't a wild cat--she was much too people friendly for that. There was a large lot behind the DMV where some wild cats lived and I suspected someone had just dropped her. My blood boiled. I loathe people who aren't kind to animals.

When it my turn at the counter, I asked the DMV guy if he knew anything about the cat. He too, shrugged. "She's been here for a few days. Keeps trying to get inside."

I called my vet from the DMV. "There's a pregnant stray cat here," I said. "If I bring her in, will you all take care of her?"

Not quite. For some reason the police either have to bring in strays or have to call in permission for people to bring in strays. Fine. I called the police department and told them the scenario. They agreed to call me into the vet.

Getting the cat into my car was a piece of cake. She was dying for attention and seemed happy just to be near me.

She wasn't shy at the vet's either, crawling around the counters and trying to get to the computers to check out the screens. They put a nametag around her, "Calico Cat," and I wished her luck and left.

That was at 11 this morning. I just got a call from the doctor (it's 4:15 pm) that the cat has delivered 2 kittens and 6-8 more appear to be on the way. And would I be interested in taking any of them home?

I called my husband at work. "Can we adopt 8 kittens?" I asked.

"No."

"But they're sort of mine."

"No."

I know he's right. And the truth is, I don't want the kittens. I want the mommy cat. She was so sweet, and so trusting. And beautiful - deep orange and black and white markings.

I know we can't have her. And I'm desperately hoping someone adopts her. She's just full of love. I'm going to visit her and the kittens this week. My husband thinks this is a mistake. That it will make it that much harder to walk away.

I'm sure he's right. But I feel responsible toward her now. And I'm soooooo grateful we got her to the vet just in time to deliver. I shudder to think of her stuck in some field with it getting ready to storm here, trying to deliver these kittens with little to no food or water. Makes me almost cry just thinking of it.

I'm so going to visit that cat. How can I not??

Star Wars No More

In delicious anticipation of the last (bye-bye, Lucas) Star Wars movie, Blair and I have begun the task of watching all of the prior Star Wars movie so we're up to date on backstory and trivia, ready to rip the new movie apart as soon as it appear onscreen.

I was seven the year the original Star Wars came out and watching the opening credits, when those big yellow words "Once long ago, in a galaxy far, far away...." appear onscreen along with that most awesome of music scores, it's like being a child again. I saw Star Wars seven times in the theatre. Seven times. I could take a small trip to Europe now for what it would cost to see a movie seven times in a theatre. Plus, as Blair pointed out, Star Wars stuck around in theaters for almost a year. I think Return of the King was probably only around for 6 weeks.

But, sadly, age has crept in and we find ourselves a little jaded as we watch the Star Wars movies. First of all, Lucas really messed up consistency wise. Obi-wan wasn't trained by Yoda, as he claims in The Empire Strikes Back. And why doesn't Obi-wan remember R2-D2? And why doesn't C3PO recall Tatooine (or Vader, for that matter). There's a lot of lose ends to be ties up in the final movie. I hope Lucas is up to the task.

I still love Han though. You know how ducklings imprint onto their mother at birth? I did that with Harrison Ford as Han Solo. No matter where Harrison Ford is, what age he is, or what he's doing, I'm frankly always more than a little disappointed not to find a Wookie somewhere by his side. Remember the movie Witness? Maybe the Amish were hiding the Wookie in the barn. It could happen.

Switching tracks, I did find out for sure that at least 2 of my stories have made it into the Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul book. Good news, as I'm hoping some readers from that book will visit my site and buy my cat book. If I ever get my act together and manage to get it to a printer and get it published. The illustrations will be done in 2 weeks, and then there's no excuse but to get it moving.

May the Force Be With Me. (You knew it was coming).

Time Nazi

My control issues kicked in this weekend at the children's writers conference I attended in Chapel Hill. For supposedly falling into the category of "creative artist," which brings to mind openness and a free spirit, I find I'm a pretty-regimented human being. A-B-C, everything in a line, one foot in front of the other, no deviations, please.

There were 25 children's writers attending the conference and we each brought pages of our current manuscript to read. The verbal guidelines given to us were that each person would read and then there would be a 5-minute critique by the group. What happened is the person read and there was anywhere from a 10-18 minute critique, depending on interest levels, how much people had to say, and how tired we were at that point.

My thought was that if someone had moderated the time limit with a timer, bell, or even a watch and loud voice, we could have moved quickly (and fairly) through the critiques, with time left over for additional writing exercises.

So when we broke up at night for small group critiques, I asked my group if it would be okay if I timed it so each person received 10 minutes of feedback. And baby, at the end of that 10 minutes I was ON it. "Sorry, time's up, we need to move on. Next person." One woman in my group called me (kindly, I think) the "Mary Lou Retton of stop-watches."

Similarly, when we were dividing up in groups on night two and everyone was hemming and hawing about who should go where, where are you going, how should we split up and on and on, I listened for a few minutes and then broke. I waved my hands in the front of the room and was like, "Okay, this is how we're dividing, and you go here and you go there, and off we all go."

Always making friends, that's me.

Control issues aside, the conference was wonderful from the standpoint of I met 24 outstanding women writers. I was impressed with the skill level of all attendees, and with their openness to share information and their sincere desire in their critiques to really help a writer through whatever challenges they were struggling with.

I'm hoping to attend their larger Fall conference, and maybe even present a brief public speaking workshop.

Anyway, glad to be home. Have a full slate of e-mails to work through, a speech to write, 2 articles to edit, 3 new articles to write, and research to conduct. And that's not including any work on the novels. Seems overwhelming, but during a break in the conference I sat alone on a hill as the sun sank, and stared at the distant hills, and smelled the wisteria, and felt the wind in my hair and thought, "I get to spend each day of my life doing exactly what I want to do. Even if I'm never a "commercial" success, how much more wonderful can life get?"

Sunshine and smiles to all of you reading today.

Dena

Weekend Trip

I'm going out of town this weekend to a writing workshop for children's writers. I've been preparing my cats for my departure all week.

"Mommy will miss you," I coo to my kitten. I press kisses into the soft fur on top of her head. "What will Mommy do without her baby to cuddle?" I blink back tears.

I turn to the cat, who is waiting for me to throw kibbles down our long hall so she can chase them, her favorite game.

"I love you," I tell her as I fling food at her face. "And I'll miss you and think about you every day. But I'll be back soon."

Last night as we were preparing for bed, I gave more kisses to the cats. "I will go into withdrawal, not having any kitty love for a whole weekend," I wail, scratching the cats behind their ears.

"What?" says my husband.

"What?" I say back.

"Why won't you see the cats this weekend?" he asked.

"My conference. I'll be gone."

"What conference?"

Uh-oh. Seems in my desire to prepare my babies for my imminent departure I may have forgotten to mention to my husband I won't be around.

"I remember when I used to be the first one you told things to," he said, throwing the cats a resentful glance. They turned their butts to him.

"Don't overanalyze it," I said. "I still love you best." I hug him and over his shoulder mouth the words, "Not really," to the cats.

He beams and hugs me. "I love you too."

That's us. One big, happy, dysfunctional family.